Respond to gender identity confusion confident in God’s unchanging truth

A major challenge facing the Church is the growing hostility of our culture to the teachings of Christianity on the nature of God’s creation and on His plan for man and woman as stewards of that creation.
 
We are told, for instance, that a child’s “gender identity” is “assigned” at birth, and that this assigned identity may be mistaken. A boy may really be a girl. It will all depend upon what that person may decide later in life, regardless of the plain reality that our DNA, which is the determinant of our sex, is absolutely unchangeable.
 
The new cultural imposture of a “fluidity of reality” pretends that what I decide about myself can in fact change who and what I really am. Thus, a boy who claims to be a girl must be acknowledged to be a girl by you and me, or we risk legal sanctions and the social excommunication reserved for bigots and haters.

The Catholic Church teaches that God made two sexes: male and female. Male/female sexual difference is not accidental and is not subject to human revision. It is impossible for a man to be a woman and vice versa.
 
This reality is rejected by the proponents of the sexual liberation movement that declares there are no inherent or innate purposes in human sexuality. Sexual relations, properly reserved to marriage, are not primarily meant for “being fruitful and multiplying” but rather are for whatever purpose anyone determines for oneself. Those who contradict this irrational approach are bound to be targeted in an attempt to silence the truth.

This destructive delusion has led to a tragic breakdown of our common understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman. It is very frustrating to have to defend simple truths about life. Yet that is our vocation as followers of Christ. We need to be patient with the people who fall into the errors of the day. We also need to be rock solid in our defense of God’s creation. Patience and strength go together.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote: “Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you, all things are passing away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices.” Our firm conviction that God’s truth can never change will lead us to possess a calm spirit in defending truth. Our failure to convince our opponents of their mistakes is not a sign that perhaps God’s truth is wrong. No, our duty is to give witness to the truth and leave the rest in God’s hands. The things of this world that contradict and reject God’s truth will pass away. Our patience is tested in holding firm to the truth despite hostility and rage from those lost in pernicious errors that dehumanize mankind, which alone of all creation is made in the image and likeness of God.
 
God made no mistake when He created us male or female. We make no mistake when we defend that truth, no matter how many people call us names or attempt to manipulate us into agreeing with the falsehoods being propagated.
 
When a man who self-identifies as a “transgender woman” attempts to shame you into affirming him in his new “identity” by claiming “if you love me, you will agree with me that I am now a woman,” the only possible Christian response is to say: “It is because I love you that I will not agree with your mistaken claim. You are what God made you, and your only hope for happiness is to embrace God and His plan for you.”

FATHER GERALD E. MURRAY is pastor of the Church of the Holy Family in Manhattan, NY, and author of Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society (Emmaus Road Publishing).